Nobody Move - Softcover

Johnson, Denis

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1554684269 ISBN 13: 9781554684267

Publisher: Harper Perennial, 2010

Synopsis

Jimmy Luntz has fallen behind on his gambling debts. A small-time crook from Bakersfield, California, he isn’t too worried -- until Ernest Gambol comes to collect. When Jimmy runs -- and he does -- a dangerous game of cat and mouse pits him against both Gambol and his vindictive boss, Juarez. The more Jimmy tries to escape, the more desperate he becomes . . . and then he meets Anita. A tough con artist who’s been accused of embezzling a couple million dollars, Anita claims she doesn’t have the money but she knows how to find it -- and she wants Jimmy to help her. With Gambol at his heels, Jimmy joins forces with Anita, and the pair embarks on a tense, exhilarating journey to cash in and stay alive.

Nobody Move, which first appeared as a serial in the pages of Playboy, is an homage to American noir and an unnerving exploration of desperation and violence. Sexy, suspenseful and touched with dark humour, Johnson’s latest novel shows a great writer at his versatile best.

About this title

About the Author

Denis Johnson is the author of The Name of the World, Already Dead, Jesus' Son, Resuscitation of a Hanged Man, Fiskadoro, The Stars at Noon, and Angels. His poetry has been collected in the volume The Throne of the Third Heaven of the Nations Millennium General Assembly. He is the recipient of a Lannan Fellowship and a Whiting Writer's Award, among many other honors for his work. He lives in northern Idaho.

From The Washington Post

From The Washington Post's Book World/washingtonpost.com Reviewed by Sarah Weinman It may seem odd that Denis Johnson has followed up on his National Book Award-winning "Tree of Smoke," a sprawling novel about the Vietnam War, with its diametric opposite, a slim, blackly comic crime tale reminiscent of those published by Fawcett Gold Medal half a century ago. But John Banville made a similar move when he adopted the name Benjamin Black for his crime novels after he won the Booker Prize; Kate Atkinson refashioned her voice within the detective fiction template; and for each the change fits like a sleek leather glove. The same can't quite be said of Johnson, but, like his literary colleagues in crime, he displays a wicked sense of fun. Johnson originally wrote "Nobody Move" for serialization in Playboy last year, which explains the narrative's four-part arc of cons, scams, grifts and guns. Jimmy Luntz, an occasional barbershop quartet singer, is a small-time hood with "a Santa Anita sheet folded up in the pocket of his blinding white tux," still feeling the itch to bet despite constant disappointment. Anita Desilvera is the embodiment of the femme fatale, ready to play her trump card -- an embezzled stash of $2.3 million -- after becoming "a vagrant, a felon, and a future divorcee" in a single morning. Among those zigzagging through Bakersfield, Calif., looking for the money are Anita's soon-to-be-ex, a crooked judge and Jimmy, whose collision course with her sets up for a cascading-domino sequence of violence. The brevity of this novel limits Johnson's scope, but he still has room for zingers (like a character who gets "thirty percent drunk"); observations of human nature (Anita: "Do you always talk about people like they're invisible?" Jimmy: "Usually just women"); and an extended gunfire sequence that plays like an outtake from "Tree of Smoke." "Nobody Move" does not rank as a major work, but enjoy it for what it is: an idiosyncratic journey through familiar terrain.
Copyright 2009, The Washington Post. All Rights Reserved.

Edition details

• Publisher: Harper Perennial
• Publication date: 2010
• ISBN 10: 1554684269
• ISBN 13: 9781554684267
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 208